Centerpiece
of the commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liquidation of the
Litzmanstadt Ghetto in Lodz. Poland (Film Museum & Stary Rynek Square
outdoor screenings).

Reunion
of Ahlem Camp survivors. Lincoln Center, NYC (May 2007)
Introduction by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who served
along with Vernon in the 84th Infantry division.

FESTIVAL
SCREENINGS

Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival

SHORT SYNOPSIS

When the
US Army 84th Infantry liberated the Ahlem-Hanover concentration camp in
April 1945, Vernon Tott, a 20-year old soldier from Iowa, felt compelled
to document the horror, using a second-hand camera he carried into battle.
Fifty years later, Vernon, now suffering from cancer, set out to find
the men he photographed, a quest that transforms all their lives. The
photographs—evidence of unbearable cruelty and miraculous survival—cement
a sustaining bond between Vernon and the Jewish survivors. Angel
of Ahlem is a moving portrait of friendship and survival.

VERNON'S JOURNEY

On April
10, 1945, Vernon Tott, a 20-year-old American GI from Sioux City, Iowa,
stumbled upon a compound outside Hanover, Germany. He and his buddies
in the 84th Infantry had just routed the few remaining Germans. The compound,
called Ahlem, ringed in barbed wire, displayed a sign warning SS troops
not to enter for fear of disease and lice. To Vernon’s horror, he
saw emaciated men barely able to stand, others lying in their urine and
feces, racked with dysentery, still others stiff and cold, dressed in
tatters and dead for days.

Not quite
sure why—perhaps as proof of what his eyes refused to believe—he
pulled out a second-hand camera and recorded the horror but also the hope
in the faces of those who had survived. As Vernon readily admits, “Back
then, I didn’t really know what was going on in the world.”
It would be years before he truly understood the significance of what
he had witnessed.

When he returned
home, Vernon put away the photographs, and got on with his life. The photos
stayed in his basement in a dust-covered shoebox until one of the Ahlem
survivors placed a notice in a 1995 veterans’ newsletter seeking
the whereabouts of the GI who had taken the photographs 50 years before.

Vernon saw
the notice, realized he was that GI, pulled out the photos and contacted
the survivor, Ben Sieradzki, who finally had proof of the truth of his
distant memories. Ben’s gratitude spurred Vernon on to identify
and find the other survivors pictured in his photos. As he met more and
more survivors and their children and grandchildren—generations
that barely missed not being here at all—the importance of his photos
hit home.

Tott, beset
by cancer and a stroke, refused to succumb to age and illness, spending
his days, in a race against time, searching and researching. He relished
the warm friendships he made with the Holocaust survivors, who call him
their Angel. Until they saw themselves and their fellow prisoners in Vernon’s
photos, many of the survivors had no evidentiary record of being in Ahlem—only
their faded memories. As Ben Berkenwald explains in the film, “Now
there’s real proof that there existed that camp.”

While his
wife and children looked on with concern, Vernon traveled the world, first
to Hanover, Germany, to visit the site of Ahlem with his new-found friends,
and then to a 60th anniversary commemoration of the liquidation of the
Lodz Ghetto in Poland, the former home of many of the Ahlem survivors.
As the old men stand together, bearing witness, the power of the tragedy
hits home anew, although tempered by the extraordinary love shared by
the old GI and the survivors of Ahlem.

ABOUT VERNON TOTT

Born in the
small farming community of Orange City, Iowa, in 1924, Vernon Tott grew
up hearing stories about his grandparents’ migration from the Netherlands
to tiny Orange City, a Dutch enclave laid out in the mid-19th century
on land that had been home to Sioux Indians. One of his grandfathers had
come from Hanover, Germany, a city that Tott would come to know all too
well.

Vernon’s
family eventually moved some 45 miles away to Sioux City where he attended
high school. In 1943 Vernon was inducted into the U.S. Army and sent overseas.
As a member of the 84th Infantry (“the Railsplitters”), Vernon
took part in the Battle of the Bulge and the eastward push to the Elbe
River.

Outside Hanover,
Germany, Tott’s unit stumbled upon Ahlem, a Nazi slave labor camp,
where Tott took a series of photographs of the emaciated, bewildered survivors.
Like most young GIs, he did not know what to make of such despair and
inhumanity. He sent the photos home. After the war, Tott packed the photos
away in a box of war memorabilia and medals for distinguished military
service.

After his
discharge, Vernon returned to Sioux City and went to work for Swift Meatpacking
Plant, where he remained until his retirement in 1984. In 1947, he married
Melva Chase and they had two children before divorcing. In 1973, he married
Betty Sadler, who had three children.

In 1995 as
his health was deteriorating, Vernon read a notice in the 84th Infantry
newsletter that changed his life forever: Benjamin Sieradzki, a Jewish
survivor of the Ahlem camp, had posted an inquiry looking for the young,
blond soldier who took photos of survivors on the day of their liberation.
Vernon realized he was the soldier Sieradzki was looking for. He retrieved
the photos and contacted Sieradzki. Thus began the search to locate the
men in Vernon’s photos, a quest that transformed all of their lives.

ABOUT THE AHLEM
CAMP

As the 84th
Infantry Division "Railsplitter" division advanced into the
interior of Germany, its troops uncovered Hannover-Ahlem (April 10, 1945)
and Salzwedel (April 14, 1945), both satellite camps of the Neuengamme
concentration camp. The SS established the Hannover-Ahlem camp on November
30, 1944, after transferring the camp and its inmates from the Continental
Gummiwerke factory at Hannover-Stöcken. In Ahlem the inmates were
forced to work in the nearby asphalt tunnels. These were to be cleared
for the production of aircraft and Panzer parts for Continental Gummiwerke
and Maschinenfabrik Hannover.

When the
soldiers of the 84th entered the camp in Ahlem, they discovered an undetermined
number of starving and ill Jewish prisoners. Reports range from 30 to
250 persons. The SS guards had abandoned these prisoners when they evacuated
the camp, taking with them some 600 "healthy" prisoners. Of
the prisoners sent on this death march, only 450 made it to the Bergen-Belsen
camp. The SS guards had shot many of those who were unable to maintain
the pace of the march. The U.S. Army war crimes investigators reported
that many of these survivors died soon after liberation from the accumulated
abuse, mistreatment, and neglect they had suffered. They estimated that
only 300 to 400 Jewish prisoners at Hanover - Ahlem survived the war.

(Camp description
provided by the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum).

ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS

Sandra
Dickson, Churchill Roberts, Cindy Hill
and Cara Pilson have co-produced and written
several documentaries for national distribution on PBS. Their most recent
film was the critically acclaimed Negroes with Guns: Rob Williams
and Black Power (2006, PBS Independent Lens, winner of the
Erik Barnouw Award for Outstanding Historical Documentary). Their previous
documentaries include Freedom Never Dies: The Legacy of Harry T. Moore
(winner of the Barnouw Award); Giving Up the Canal; Campaign
for Cuba; Last Days of the Revolution; and Deciding
Who Dies. Roberts and Dickson are Co-Directors of The Documentary
Institute, a division of The College of Journalism and Communications
at the University of Florida. Cindy Hill and Cara Pilson are the Institute’s
Associate Directors.

Music Score
Composer Todd Boekelheide won an Academy Award in 1984
for Best Sound for Amadeus and an Emmy in 1998 for scoring the
documentary Kids of Survival. He has scored more than 50 films,
including the feature films Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death
of Hannah Senesh; One; Nina Takes a Lover and the
documentaries Boffo! Tinseltown’s Bombs and Blockbusters
(Emmy nomination); In the Matter of Cha Jung Hee; The Alzheimer's
Project; Beautiful Son; Ballets Russes; Freedom
Machines; Last Letters Home; Alice Waters and her Delicious
Revolution; Forgotten Fires; Regret to Inform;
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse; and Dear
America: Letters Home from Vietnam.

EXTERNAL LINKS

Official
Website including a gallery of photographs taken by Tott in April, 1945.Review: Jewish Advocate, July 2012

Home Use DVD:
$29.95

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